Cuba Plans to Reform Political System : Communism: But there still will be only one party. The overhaul is an apparent response to the upheaval in East Europe.

Cuba’s Communist Party leadership Saturday announced plans to reform the country’s one-party political system.

“Conditions have matured to start a concrete and practical process of perfecting the political and institutional system of the nation,” the party’s Central Committee said in a statement.

The move was an apparent response to mounting political and economic pressures facing Cuba as a result of the crisis of the socialist systems in Eastern Europe. So far, Cuba has remained one of the Communist world’s staunchest Stalinist holdouts and has criticized the democratic reforms that have swept out Old Guard Communist leaders in the Eastern Bloc since last autumn.

Saturday’s statement made clear that Cuba is not abandoning its one-party Communist system.

“What we are talking about is the perfecting of a single, Leninist party based on the principles of democratic centralism,” it said. “Democratic centralism” is a Leninist euphemism for the traditional Communist practice of requiring unswerving commitment by all party ranks to decisions ultimately made by top leadership.

The Central Committee said that the 4th Congress of Cuba’s Communist Party will be held in the first half of 1991 on a date to be announced. It said that working groups will be set up in the meantime to study ways of improving the running of the Central Committee, the National Assembly, local governments and mass organizations of the party, such as the women’s organization and neighborhood committees known as Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.

To Wayne S. Smith, a veteran American diplomat and academic expert on Cuban affairs, the Central Committee’s announcement was more noteworthy for the reforms it appeared to rule out than for those it suggested might take place in Cuba.

“They’re saying there won’t be any profound changes, that what changes they do make will be within the existing system. They’re saying we know there are some problems and we intend to address them but that we won’t accept glasnost and we won’t accept perestroika ,” Smith said .

Smith, who formerly headed the U.S. interests section in Havana, said in Washington that Cuban President Fidel Castro may sense growing “disgruntlement” on the part of Cubans as the political reforms in Eastern Europe “increasingly isolate Cuba in the Communist world.”

“But I don’t think he is under any real pressure yet. He is a clever politician and what he seems to be doing is giving a bit now . . . to avoid pressures to give a lot more later on,” Smith said.

The Central Committee’s statement cited the crisis shaking socialism around the world but said that Cuba had managed to avoid mistakes that were made elsewhere.

“But we have to be aware that we can and must stop ourselves making other mistakes,” it said.

It said above all Cuba should adapt the principles of Marxism-Leninism to its own realities and idiosyncrasies and not try to copy foreign models.

This has led in the past to a “loss of freshness” and to too much bureaucracy in the working of the country’s political system, the statement said.

The statement also called for the creation of “a climate favorable for the development of creative thinking and fertile debate” and the application of a coherent policy of information by the media.

The Central Committee warned the Cuban people to be prepared for the possibility of invasion or war “in the face of the crisis of socialism and the aggressive euphoria of North American imperialism.”

Castro has repeatedly rejected the reforms effected in Eastern Europe. As recently as Jan. 28, he said he would stick to orthodox communism even if Moscow cuts off its $5 billion in annual aid.